ITIM - Java Version, Password Reset and SAP JCo

It's not very often that I wrapper a combination of topics together into a single post, but these are short snippets that would look a bit strange in a posting all of their own. They are trivial to the point of being unworthy of their own posting!

Java Versions
In the good old days, the version of Java you had installed on your client machine would play havoc with ITIM's applets: Workflow Designer; Form Designer; Join Rules Definition. It used to be that an upgrade of Java would immediately wreck your ability to use these applets. That all changed, though, and for quite some time I've enjoyed the ability to upgrade Java as and when I saw fit and everything still worked. Until yesterday.

Java 1.6.0_18 afforded me the luxury of using the ITIM applets. Java 1.6.0_22 does not! At least, 1.6.0_22 won't allow me to save my workflow! At least, not using ITIM v5.1 FP1.

You have been warned!

Password Resets
This is more of a reminder than anything else. Sometimes, it isn't enough to change a password in ITIM. What happens if the account on the target system has been locked due to authentication failures? A change password may not unlock the account and indeed this is the case when it comes to many systems - SAP springs to mind as my most recent example.

What can be done? Well, in simplistic terms, the changePassword operation for the account type could be updated to perform an account restore function after the password has been changed. The resulting workflow could look like this:

Of course, you may want to put a significant amount of logic around this restore process. You may want to invoke that only if the requestor of the change password operation is a specific person, for example.

SAP JCo
The SAP Java Connector that is used by the TDI SAP NetWeaver connector can, periodically, through an error message like this: "max no of 100 conversations exceeded".

The "fix", apparently, is to set an environment variable called CPIC_MAX_CONV and set the variable to a value of at least 500. I'm sure you can figure out how to set the environment variable for your Operating System and I'm sure you can work out that your TDI service will need to be restarted for the variable to have any effect.

And so ends today's collection of snippets. I told you they were trivial. I do hope you aren't too bored as a result of reading the above. Until the next adventure!